One thing's for sure, PC Plod will never make sense of it. Seeking and serving search warrants against journalists at the behest of aggrieved National party politicians is one thing. But making sense of techno-blather between bloggers and hackers is well beyond the capability of Her Majesty's Constabulary.

Well, it's nice to know my work on the Ben Rachinger material has been basically vindicated; I pointed out that the timeline Ben has presented has never actually made sense, and showed he was still working for/scamming Slater well after he claimed he wasn't.

Well, the hacking of The Standard is pretty illegal. But beyond that it's a little hazy. Ben claims to have hacked my email, for example, and Slater didn't explicitly ask for it... so, I dunno. Ask a lawyer.

Really? I was under the impression there was no real evidence of what went on, therefore no prosecution (but I haven't been following all that closely...). Perhaps this changes that? Or perhaps it was only "pretty illegal"!

So, is the real story here that politicians have been blackmailing senior NZ journalists by having the spooks hack their private communications and search for nude photos.

Because, well, isn't exactly that why we got that new law to make sure all our ISPs and Telcos had to install pre-hacked US hardware, under firm guidance of the local spooks, and not the good Chinese stuff instead? And now we want another law to ban encryption, because Paris.

There was a weird thing about that time when Slater claimed that there was an insidious evil left wing plot that he'd uncovered to drive him insane .... is all this made up stuff what he was rabbiting on about? seems what was reallly happening was that he was being trolled into insanity by his own people knowing he was a soft touch if you fed his paranoia

Interesting but as always when dealing with these clowns (and doesn't this prove what clowns they are) we are not getting the full storyMissing log entries, cover ups of journalists and on it goesInterestingly the possible name of Slaters funder has been mentioned on another blogI don't want to drop Russell into legal problems, so no cluesMore mystery Oh all right, read PG's blog if you want more

Bad couple of years for Slater...fucks The New Zealand Truth newspaper to death, is hacked by Rawshark, takes out Judith Collins, gets busted for contempt of court, is cold shouldered by Key, knocked out by Jessie Ryder, and punked by an internet con-man. How far down can this losing streak go?

Did I miss much?

Thanks for all this Keith. It is yet another confirmation about what a joke Slater and his world is. I don't think I'm going to pay it another thought.

When a widely respected former governor of the Reserve Bank and more narrowly respected leader of the opposition, Don Brash, made a complaint to the police over the potential burglary or hacking of his office and girlfriend's home following The Hollow Men, the police did absolutely nothing for more than a year, bizarrely even citing the impact on their resources of an offshore Apec conference as a reason why ...

But when a blogger, Cameron Slater, makes a similar complaint to the police about Dirty Politics based on information from Ben Rachinger (!), the police pretty much immediately raid the author of the book's house?

The only reason I can think of for the different response is that the police, being a very hierarchical organisation, and respectful of authority, acted in both cases on what they believed the prime minister of the day might want (which is not to accuse either Helen Clark or John Key of direct interference but to say the police made political assumptions.

I hope someone could point to another (less concerning reason) complainant Slater got better service from the police than complainant Brash? Because, with all due respect to the host here, the alleged hacking of a blogger's server for political reasons is not as serious a matter constitutionally than the alleged interference for political reasons of the leader of the opposition's private political communications.

It would seem to me, that, at best, the two complaints should be treated the same but that if one was to be privileged as a higher priority for police resources it would be the Brash one.